


Other Team

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:10:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before you get to the future, you gotta relive the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Team

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted October 2010.

Other Team  
By Candle Beck

 

This has happened to you before.

Here you are in the final weekend of the season with the division on the line, and your team has come on strong and late, excellent pitching, incredible rookies, a specific type of chemistry in the clubhouse, and yeah, you know all about it. You are basically living in a perpetual state of déjà vu.

The Padres need to sweep the series on the road to even force a one-game playoff, and they win the first two, because baseball is a vicious game and nothing can ever be easy. You take the loss in the opener, which was expected by most sensible people (and even you, bizarrely, sickeningly), and then Matty implodes a little bit in the second, which is a shock to all.

Everybody is jacked up before the third game, snappish nervy feeling in the clubhouse, tensely brief arguments over the remote control and food table. Freddy Sanchez borrows Mike Fontenot's iPod without asking when he goes to the weight room, and Fontenot almost takes a swing at him when he comes back, only barely held back by Pablo and Cody.

Even this stuff, it's so familiar. Teammates are just co-workers until it looks like you're going somewhere, and then they become more important than family, and the fights you have with them feel exactly the same as fifteen years old again, apocalyptic like that, life-stopping.

You're avoiding most interactions, anyway, still working through the guilt of the first game, and your miserable past two months, and whatever else. You can't imagine that anyone wants to talk to you.

Half the bullpen and a few of the others say a prayer in a cluster, heads bowed and hands linked. Aubrey Huff, who has never before played for a reason in October, stands to make a little speech just before the guys go up for batting practice, a perfect little knife twisted in everyone's heart:

"You only ever end up where you're meant to be, and here we are. Good enough to get this far means good enough to keep going. So let's keep fuckin' going."

It used to be Huddy, you think absently, staring at your feet instead of your first baseman because it has always embarrassed you in a secondhand way, big emotional speeches and all that. Huddy gives a fantastic win-this-fucking-game speech.

And then, the game. Everything is easier once you're in the dugout. Everybody is in it together, sitting too close and hollering through cupped palms. Friends on all sides, guys who have sworn to protect you because you wear the right uniform.

It's taut all the way through, airless even though the Giants score the only runs. Jonathan Sanchez dances in and out of trouble, pitching with a torturous lack of precision. The Padres run into walls and fight off ten pitches every other at-bat, snarling and shouting and urging each other on with the intensity of hostages staging an uprising. San Diego has led the division for most of the year, and they look like they can hardly believe what's happening to them.

You keep a baseball pressed between your palms, which is a luck thing from a long time ago.

In the top of the fifth, Tim Lincecum comes to perch on the back of the bench, his hip against your shoulder. "Barry, fuck," he says.

"What's up dude."

"This shit is crazy right here. Fuckin'. _Ridiculous_."

Lincecum is handling the pressure with something less than total aplomb. He's been clumsier than normal, sunflower seeds cracking underfoot from the bag he spilled earlier, his cap fumbling in and out of his hands. He can't sit still longer than three minutes at a stretch.

"And it gets worse, you're telling me. It--it gets worse?"

You give him a side-eye. "When?"

"Later, if we--the next series, it gets even crazier than this, right?"

"Don't think about that yet," you tell him, putting a lot of _stupid kid_ in your voice.

"I'm not, fuck. I'm just saying. Maybe I need to get some like heart-slowing medication or some shit, if it's gonna get much worse than this."

"See, Timmy, that's thinking about it. And talking about it, which makes me think about it. Not so cool, man."

Lincecum exhales roughly. You're not looking at him because you're looking at the field, and nothing short of a bomb going off is going to take your eyes away.

"Sorry. Nervous," Lincecum says unnecessarily.

"You're gonna wanna learn how to get over that," you say, but not in a mean way. It has sorta become your job on this team, little nuggets of wisdom for the younger guys on how not to turn out like you did.

Tim kinda leans into you for a second, resting his arm on your head, and you allow it, because it helps him sometimes. Your cap is skewed now, slanting sharply across your eye-line.

The inning ends, and Lincecum pushes off the bench to go pester someone else. You haven't held his attention so well, these past few weeks. The crowd rushes and builds like a storm, a compact blizzard penned in by the walls of the stadium, orange rally towels instead of snow. You have chewed your thumbnail almost to bleeding.

This feeling, you thought you'd forgotten but really it was like dropping acid, a state of mind impossible to recall with sober reflection. You have to be in the moment to recognize it.

The Giants are up 2-0 until the eighth inning, when Buster Posey slashes a home run into the left field stands, and the team leaps as one to the rail, crashing into each other and clutching at shoulders, hooking onto belts. You have Andres Torres on your back, and Lincecum's bony elbow dug into your stomach, wonderfully pressed from all sides.

Buster is attacked when he gets back to the dugout, joyfully swallowed up by his team. The kid emerges beaming, his face bright red and his hands visibly shaking with adrenaline. There is a crazed look in Posey's eyes today, a kind of disbelieving glee that makes a person want to jump off rooftops because it has to be a dream.

You're on the rail when Wilson comes in in the top of the ninth, three outs away, you and everyone else. Lincecum is shoved up next to you, a hand wrenched in your jersey although he doesn't seem to fully register that it's you beside him; it could be any man wearing white. Tim is spitting curses and prayers, "Come on motherfucker, please please Jesus."

Everyone is on their feet. Forty-four thousand people with their throats wide open. The daytime sky torn with clouds overhead, the sun in patches across the outfield. Electricity fills your mouth, buzzing in the roots of your teeth.

Wilson is a tightrope walk most of the time, painstaking and inconsistent and plagued by baserunners, but you've all had enough drama in this series. A groundout to short, a groundout to second, and then a swinging strikeout just like something written in Hollywood, and Wilson crosses his arms, points to the sky, opens his mouth in a scream that is lost in the explosion of the crowd. Elation erupts inside your chest, tearing you up like shrapnel except good, and Lincecum is wrapped around your middle, jerking up and down and maybe breaking some ribs but you don't care, it's beautiful.

Posey bounds out from behind the plate and into Wilson's arms, Wilson lifting him clear off the ground. Posey is howling, raising his arm up, his glove with the ball still trapped inside.

The team floods the field. Stampeding, tripping over each other, shouting and delirious. You remember this moment clearer than any other, this single irreplaceable moment when you've won, you've _won_. Baseball is so black and white sometimes.

You get confused for a minute, crashing together with your teammates on the infield, expecting to see different faces in the crush, a different color scheme. Wild sense of discombobulation, wrong side of the bay, wrong shape of the ballpark around you, but that doesn't last. You center yourself: San Francisco and the tenth year, Matt Cain hollering in your ear, Tim Lincecum across the scrum climbing your rookie catcher like he's a public statue and Tim is drunk on the streets at night. Only this moment, and no other.

This moment, pouring down to the clubhouse with your teammates, plastic sheets up over the lockers and the champagne bottles shining in the ice, and you are living it on several different levels. Some part of you is a decade younger. You get hugged thirty times in five minutes, and your body aches gloriously from the pressure. Your throat is sore from shouting already. The whole world is drenched in beer and champagne.

It's the sixth time you've made the playoffs in your major league career, and the first time with this second team of yours. You get to keep playing. It's like Huff said, just keep going.

Wilson has procured a Viking helmet from somewhere, and he cries, "Intergalactic champions!" even though it is just the western division, just the first step of the next month of your life. You crow approval, lifting your two beers high in sticky hands.

Lincecum ricochets into your side. "Barry!"

"Tim!" you ape right back. He latches on to your brand-new and newly ruined division champs shirt, a wide ravenous look in his eyes.

"Come here, come, come with me," and he's dragging you away from the growing crowd of people in the clubhouse, all those microphones and cameras. You go willingly enough, draining one beer and dropping it with a clatter behind you, leaving the other half-full on a passing table.

Down the hallway and past the trainer's rooms and offices, Lincecum's hand around your wrist and you staring at the dark hair stuck to his neck. He shoots you a grin, flushed-face and promising, and you remember this part too.

(Eric Chavez in the equipment room at the Coliseum with the busted light, glass crunching under your spikes and his dusty hands closing in your hair, snickering against your face. Eric Chavez murmuring into your mouth, "We did it we did it," and nothing could have stopped you touching him, not $126 million or a pennant, nothing from this planet or any of the far-flung others.)

Your pulse kicks up, your skin going warm. Lincecum takes you into a video room, and these places look the same in every ballpark, this league or the other. The monitors are stuck on the start screen and glowing blue, and that's the only light.

Lincecum pushes you up against the door, pushes himself up flush against you. You suck in a hard breath, close your hands around his hips.

"This is amazing," he reports, mouth hot on the edge of your jaw in a way that makes your thoughts go fuzzy.

"Yeah, that," you agree distractedly.

"It's the adrenaline?" Questions, always questions, Lincecum's voice ever-uplifting at the end, but only half the time he actually expects an answer. "Except that I can deal with adrenaline, I have a million times. This, this is something else. Here, you stay," and he pins you in place, slides down your body to his knees.

You drop your head back and breathe out raggedly. Your hand slips into his sticky-damp hair because he likes it there, he's told you so. Lincecum presses his face to your stomach, his wide grin.

"You never told me it was gonna be like this," Lincecum mumbles. His hands are at work on your belt, the weightless white of your uniform pants peeling back.

"I, I forgot," you say, which is not quite true but close enough for where you are.

Tim snorts a laugh and shakes his head, one hand working you hard and his other flat on the lowest part of your stomach, hidden in your jersey and undershirt. You breathe in little pants, gasps, kneading at his hair. Good at this, Tim always has been unfairly good at this.

"How the hell could you forget?" he asks, guileless and looking up at you.

You don't have an answer for that, you're confused and dizzy and you want his mouth on you with an intensity so single-minded it's like your blood isn't even moving anymore. You give him the slightest tug forward, his lips parting so expectantly, and as he takes you down you hold back a groan only because you've had a decade of practice, all these little underground rooms, these doors without locks.

Odd divergent kind of thoughts, as your head tips back and your body flushes, your fingers careful in Tim's hair because it gets tangled so easily. You think about the last time, maybe ten days ago before you both got irreversibly distracted by the end of the season. The hotel in Denver and so drunk, dumb hands, Tim shivering and hot and bent under you, all hipbones and legs over your shoulders, skinny tight arms. Times before that, ballparks and big cities all over this country. It's been years with this kid, and that ends up being the strangest thing to think.

Lincecum is so good you kinda feel like you should be paying him, or maybe that's only the adrenaline, whatever this feeling is that you're calling adrenaline because you can't think of a better word. You have both hands in his hair, your lip sucked in hard between your teeth, and you press forward into his mouth at the last moment, the floor falling away and the room tilting sharply on its side as you gasp and come and come.

Your legs give out a little bit. You slump back against the door. Lincecum stands up into you, bracing you with his body and taking your hand, pushing it into his pants. You're numb with receding pleasure, uncoordinated, your fingers not working right. Lincecum moans in frustration against your throat, licking the champagne off your skin, and eventually you get around to jerking him off properly. He lasts all of two minutes, which you're thankful for if only because the angle is hell on your wrist. Lincecum bites down on your new shirt and jersey as he finishes, a groan trapped in his throat. Then you're supporting him as much as the door is supporting you, left arm solid around his back.

A quiet moment--one of those quiet moments. Lincecum's weight is nothing for you, like a particularly thick down comforter, overly warm but bearable, certainly bearable. It's still very dark, your eyes hardly adjusted at all in the nightlike blue monitor light, and in your foggy suggestible state of mind you think that this could be anywhere and anytime, anybody you want it to be.

Tim smacks a kiss on your neck, and pulls away. "Hoo. Good times."

He's grinning like an idiot; you don't need to be able to see him to know that.

"Game face, Timmy," you tell him as you fix your pants and belt. Your hands are shaking slightly. "All kindsa cameras out there."

"I'm fine, what. I'm awesome."

Lincecum rustles around, and you want to put your hands on his face, something weird and childish like that, just because it's dark. You want to know what that idiot grin feels like.

He goes out first and you have to wait a few minutes so it doesn't look suspicious, a precaution that is probably stupid and laughable, but makes you feel better all the same. Ten years screwing around with one teammate or another, and Deadspin still hasn't figured out that you're gay. You see no reason to mess with success.

Coming down the hallway, you can hear the celebration spilling out of the clubhouse, raucous unintelligible party noise, vague fuzz of static. Your hands won't stop shaking.

The clubhouse is packed. The front brass is here now, and the scouts and ticket agents and grounds crew and everybody even tangentially involved with the team, a whole whack of reporters. Silver and blue beer cans are scattered everywhere.

Lincecum is across the room, attached to his catcher's back as Posey attempts to give an interview to the Fox Sports lady. You only get a glimpse of him, and then you are waylaid by Matt Cain who wants you to shotgun a beer with him.

You're starting to feel it now, encroaching drunk at the edges of your vision, snaking in like a vine twisting around your backbone. Reporters everywhere, camera eyes, and no one is trying to talk to you, which is good, just how you'd prefer it if anyone bothered to ask. You dig your phone out of your locker to find it groaning under the weight of messages and missed calls.

Your family's texts are all exclamation points and emoticons and less-than-three hearts. They are proud of you and they love you. Your friends employ more profanity but the general message is the same.

Joe Blanton and Ramon Hernandez of the Phillies and Reds, respectively, have left practically identical messages about kicking your ass in the championship series. The unconscious coordination makes you smirk; ballplayers are the same all over.

Your phone rings in your hand. It's Tim Hudson, and without thought you answer, lifting your voice over the crush of noise around you.

"Holy shit kid!" Hudson yells in your ear.

"Huddy," and you ride a sharp edge over into gleeful, something fluttering fast and brief in your chest. "How'd you like that, baby?"

"Fuckin' gorgeous! Got that motherfucker _done_ , I seen ya."

"Yeah, and you're gonna see it right up close, you fuckin' ready for this?"

"Bring it, son, bring it. Lookin' forward to that shit."

Hudson sounds delighted. He's the presumptive ace of the Braves team that will come to San Francisco to start the playoffs on Friday. A number of years ago, he was the best friend you'd ever had.

You lean against your locker with your free palm flat to your ear, hunched down a little bit. All around you guys are cheering and laughing.

"It's crazy right now. Just insane," you say in a weird breath-filled tone.

Hudson pauses, a hitch like he's trying to remember his line. "Better or worse?"

There's the rub. You put your fingers against your eye, pressing down so that you are blind on one side. The celebration blurs around you, everyone soaked and now they look kinda melted. You try to call up what it was like in Oakland, those four first seasons of your career when you went to the playoffs every year like it was a birthright, just one more thing you'd earned through your lifetime of hard work and prayer. A noticeably different kind of joy back then, the treacherous twenty-two-year-old version of it, and you remember the blanking thrum of bass over everything, the glittery sting of champagne sprayed directly into your eyes, the weight of a middle infielder hitching a piggyback ride across the room and almost strangling you. You remember standing with a weary arm around Eric Chavez's shoulders, Tim Hudson in the middle of some ridiculous story and Mark Mulder sneaking up from behind to pour a beer over his head. You remember being very aware of that moment as one of the best in your life, and then correcting yourself sharply, _so far_.

Better or worse? Terrible question, really.

"Older and wiser, Timmy," you say, and the name catches in your throat but you don't think anyone notices. "It's a different kind of thing now."

"Don't be gettin' mature on me, boy," Hudson warns, half-serious and you want to get the laugh back in his voice. You feel like you're wrecking the mood.

"Wouldn't hear of it," you say, scraping up some brag and bravado from watching Brian Wilson hold court across the room. "Gonna kick your ass when you come to town, by the way. Consider yourselves fuckin' warned."

"Yeah, you think so. Listen, my ride is leaving--Billy! Hold the fuck up, man--I'll call you when we get in if it's not real late, all right?"

You nod even though Hudson can't see you. "Yeah, all right."

Hudson says, "Love ya kid," off-hand and casual, and you mumble, "Yeah you too," and get off the phone quick.

The party rages around you. Lincecum is drinking shots out of Dixie cups with Madison Bumgarner and Sergio Romo. You want to leave, and you kinda want to take Lincecum with you.

But then a reporter waylays you, a schlubby-looking sort in a crumpled brown sports coat. You recognize him vaguely; he's from one of those cable sports shows that no one watches. There is a digital recorder held up before your face, a demanding look trained on you like a tiger in a zoo cage waiting for its meal.

"Barry, you're one of the few Giants who've been in this position before," the reporter says in that over-familiar way of the media everywhere. "Talk about how this experience is different from the times you made the playoffs with the A's."

That's rather on the nose, and you hate that reporter-speak 'talk about this'--your unvoiced kneejerk response every single time is 'don't tell me what to do.'

You shrug. "I just feel really lucky. All these guys have worked so hard for this. It's a great fuh--great team. Really great."

You haven't exactly answered his question, but they usually don't care about that. The reporter nods his head, reminding you uncharitably of a brainless dog.

"And have you heard anything yet about what role you'll play in the series with Atlanta? Assuming you make the postseason roster, I mean."

Only half-paying attention, trying to catch Lincecum's eye from across the room, you take a second to register that, and then you look at the reporter, mortification flaring in the pit of your stomach.

"The fuck?" you say with heat, and watch the reporter's face scrunch in displeasure as he thumbs the recorder off.

"Don't curse on the mike, are you a fucking rookie or something?"

 _He's_ pissed off. You kinda gape at him for a second, not sure how the two of you can come from the same species.

"Get the hell away from me," you say, and you don't shove him only because there are cameras all over the place.

The reporter sneers, "Always been an asshole, haven't you," and turns away, bulling his way through the crowd in search of his next victim.

You suddenly feel like everyone is watching you (though no one is, no one notices), and you latch on to Pablo Sandoval, who is conveniently nearby and way more drunk than you feel is reasonable considering the game only ended a half-hour ago. Elation has a multiplying effect on on any extant intoxication, you remember, and you cut him a break.

Pablo is excellent cover. You make the rounds with him, pouncing on your teammates and poor Dave Flemming, who has had more beer poured on him than any three players. It's astonishing his microphone still works.

Flem is media like that fucker back there, but he's safe, he's one of yours. He would never ask you out loud about your chances of making the postseason roster. You swallow uneasily, the question recurring in your mind like a thrown dart piercing your defenses.

It's not the first time the thought has crossed your mind, of course. With every start you made in the past month, every man you put on base, every gut-wrenching loss the team took on your behalf, the forces against you gained strength. The hole you're in kept getting deeper, and meanwhile Madison Bumgarner has been pitching with the unconscious brilliance that is only possible at twenty-one years old, and nobody in the bullpen ever allows any runs anymore, and there are still just eleven spots for pitchers on the playoff roster. The internet has written you off unanimously, you know, but you stopped listening to them years ago.

If you don't make the postseason roster, you're not going to want to know about it. You'd rather be hit by a bus and stay in a coma for the whole fall and winter. You don't think you could live through sitting on the bench in October.

You lean heavily on Sandoval's back, accepting another beer from one of the clubhouse kids scrambling through the packed room trying to keep everybody nice and lit. You banish the darker edge; this is no time for that kind of negativity.

Your phone buzzes in your back pocket as Sandoval and Edgar Renteria chatter giddily back and forth in Spanish. It's a text message from Rich Harden, _c u in the series, muthafucka_ , and you grin sharp like a slap, unbidden. You call him quickly, letting your fingers go without time to overthink.

It rings once, and then Richie himself, sardonic and caught someplace loud, probably the Ballpark at Arlington with his own team. The Rangers had their own division sewn up weeks ago.

"Dude, what the fuck," Harden says jubilantly. "Took you guys long enough."

"Got that motherfucker done," copying Hudson but you've been doing that for a decade, it's okay.

"Yeah it's a scene right about now, huh? Sounds crazy there."

"Seriously. And hey, um, good job for you guys too." You realize belatedly that you have not spoken to Harden in a couple of months, not since the Rangers were in town to play the A's (all of you are entirely in agreement about the unending weirdness of that endeavor) and the two of you and Eric Chavez got drunk in Hayward just like old times. "How you been, man?"

"Oh I'm fantastic," Harden says, and he's lying, or joking, you're not sure. "They're never gonna let me pitch again, but yeah, fucking spectacular other than that."

A weird little hiccup in your mind--you hadn't realized they were talking about Harden like they talked about you, like somebody expendable, a risk that had stopped being worth it. You have this out-of-date impression of him, Rich Harden when he was first called up and still too young to shave and he pitched better than anybody for those first few months.

You sorta laugh, wanting to keep it light. "Don't assume the worst, man. Everybody needs a deep staff in October."

"Yeah, Z, you and me are both kinda banking on that. Fuck it, though, congratulations."

"You too," you say with your throat abruptly constricted.

"It's gonna be a tight one, I think. Good match-ups."

"You guys feeling pretty good about the Rays?"

"Hell yeah, fuck the Rays. Nobody's giving us much of a chance over here, but fuck that shit too. We're going deep into this thing, like, all the way."

"Then I guess I'll see you there," you say.

"Yeah you better. Fuck. This is some seriously wild shit, Barry."

You don't know what he means--the postseason, the possibilities, the weight of the many years behind you now, something.

"What, you forgot?" you ask, careless and doubting. Richie made it to the playoffs with the Cubs year before last; it can't mean the same to him as it does to you.

"No, it's just different. Every time it's different, like, not what I'm expecting."

"What're you expecting?"

He pauses, a considering hitch of breath. "Who the fuck knows, really? It's probably only 'cause I get really drunk at that kinda party."

It's a plain obfuscation. You know exactly what Harden is missing on every subsequent team he plays for, no matter how well he does or how far they get. You know exactly why Wrigley Field and the Ballpark at Arlington have never quite felt like home to him. You don't call him on it, because what good has glorifying the Oakland teams of the new millennium ever done for either of you?

Searching for more stable footing, you call up the picture of Rich Harden as he was a couple of months ago, laughing on the curb at you and Chavvy on opposite sides of the street, dueling to be the first to hail a cab. Harden's eyes were a paler color blue than you remembered, everything about him kinda dimmed but not necessarily in a bad way, just like growing up, calming down. No more lightning bolts or hundred mile an hour fastballs, but that was only to be expected. This far down the road, everyone has lost a step or two.

You and Richie had a grand total of three sexual encounters, all over the course of the same month six years ago, the season after Eric Chavez got married. Only ever on the road, random hotel rooms with hallways long enough for a plane to take off, and Harden bent over the sink in the bathroom, straddling your body and gripping the headboard with both hands. You were pretty messed up back then. You got drunk and stuck your hand down his pants, and for a couple of minutes you thought it might actually work, that you might have actually found the cure, but then your mouth slid over the declination of Harden's hip, the place where Eric Chavez's body had a scar, a rough whitened place from when he'd wiped out practicing ollies in a San Diego parking lot fifteen years ago. You love that scar, slick under your tongue, tasteless and clean. Harden's hip was flawless, the skin unbroken, and the difference, the distance, shot through you like guilt made pure and silverine. There was no cure. There never would be.

The other two times were just because Harden thought it was cool and jumped you, and he was still really hot, so you went with it (spirit wasn't willing, flesh was very strong). The fourth time, you pushed his hands away from your face and said, "Actually we're not doing that anymore," and he looked like he'd been slapped but only for a second.

But that's old stuff. You've moved past it. You shake off the bitter fugue of nostalgia, and refocus. San Francisco. The tenth year.

"It's been a ridiculous series, anyway. Fuckin' nerve-wracking," you tell Harden. "I think I'ma sleep straight through to Monday."

"Not going out ragin' tonight?" Harden asks, a certain tipped undertone to his voice.

"Nah, I'm an old man now, haven't you heard?"

"Well, no worries, your mental age is still like twelve years old. Think young and shit."

"Yeah Richie, what you said."

Harden exhales against the receiver, rustling sound like wind from far away. "All right, well. I'll let you get back to it."

"That's, I mean, that's cool, I can talk for a minute."

You've taken up a spot against the wall, blocked away in your little phone-call world, pressing your palm flat to your free ear. Everyone leaves you alone, which is the good thing about talking on the phone in the middle of a party.

"Go mingle, you antisocial bastard," Richie tells you. He knows you pretty well. "How many more times is this gonna happen to you, honestly?"

He doesn't mean it cruelly; the nice thing about Harden is that he is never cruel no matter how flagrant the provocation. Your personality induces a lot of people to be mean to you, or maybe you're just exceptionally thin-skinned. It's never been entirely clear.

"Okay," you say, capitulating. "I'll see you soon, yeah?"

"Goddamn right you will," Harden says, that so-cool tone that has always been a poison arrow into your undefended heel. "Good luck, man."

"Yeah you too, good luck," you mumble inanely, and end the call. Your heart is pounding for some reason, pressure from all sides.

Around you, your team is cheering and crowing and even singing over there, singing that ringing matador's theme, _olé, olé olé olé_ , the infield gathered together with arms slung heavy around each other's shoulders to form a chain. Madison Bumgarner is traveling around on Brian Wilson's back, lanky kid-pitcher arms wrapped around his closer's chest in a backwards bear hug. Lincecum is over with the unrelated Sanchez brothers, laughing a lot and drunk, plainly drunk even from across the room where you are, his face flushed and scrunched up around the eyes, flickering in the traffic.

At once, you are lost in an especially severe onrush of déjà vu. Suddenly it's ten years ago and the first time this happened to you, back in the other league, your other team. When you were just a punk kid pitcher yourself, slotted into the playoff rotation with Mulder and Hudson like you actually belonged there (and you did, way the hell back when, you absolutely did), and you remember another clubhouse overcrowded to a dangerous degree, packed and slippery and reeking of beer, your hair plastered down and your sinuses on fire, and then Chavez.

Chavez all the way across the room, in the center of a cluster of teammates and reporters because he was a golden boy back then too, and you caught his eye as you are trying to catch Lincecum's now, through the shifting morass of soaked ballplayers and the detritus of victory.

You caught Chavez's eye, Chavez who you didn't know particularly well at that point, only a few months on the team and still pretty damn infatuated with Tim Hudson (in your defense, almost everybody else was too), but in that moment Chavez shot you a grin through the crowd, black hair and dark eyes and perfect baseball face, and the elements crashed together, collided like a ten-car pileup. Maybe it never would have happened at all if Chavez hadn't grinned at you with such impeccable timing, right in the middle of the best day of your life, surrounded by all those guys you newly loved.

But he did grin at you like that. And you did love those guys. You always remember the start of things as clear as a bell, and that was the start for you and Chavez, the first time you thought, _hey look at him_ with that particular slant in your mind.

Not a week later, after you walked into Yankee Stadium wearing enemy colors and lived to tell the tale, you locked the door of a hotel bathroom in New York City and got on your knees for him. Chavez was laughing, breathless and drunk, fingers dug into your hair with none of his native grace, all those things he could do on a baseball field. His stomach trembled under your hands, his shirt pushed up and his jeans pulled open. You were shaking with eagerness, messy and off your form, probably a little drunk. Chavez laughing, clutching at you, stammering over your name. It was juvenile and clumsy and wonderful. Everything else that happened between the two of you happened after that.

You jerk your head roughly, like trying to shake off a hangover in the shower, and consciously pick the past up, jam it down as deep as you can.

Lincecum is inconstant across the room, not looking for you. You can't catch his eye, so you go over there, edging through the crowd like a minefield and leading with your left shoulder. Lincecum is involved in an animated discussion with Freddy Sanchez, and he startles when you sling an arm around his shoulder, looks up and immediately relaxes.

"Decided to grace us with your attention again, eh?" Lincecum says. "I for one am honored."

You put him into a headlock that he doesn't resist at all, folding in neatly against your side. Freddy is grinning at the two of you.

"Don't hate me 'cause I'm popular, dude," you tell him.

Lincecum snorts against your ribs, short-lived warm ruffle that you can't really feel through your shirt and jersey. His hand is fisted on your hip, and you are suffering flashbacks to that blowjob earlier, navy blue light and Lincecum's pale hands, impossibly hot mouth taking you down. You let him go just because you're not really in the right state of mind to trust your own judgment.

"You don't look nearly drunk enough," Lincecum diagnoses, and presents a fresh beer with a flourish.

You take it, sharp crack of aluminum, sucking the spare off your thumb. You kill half the can in one long pull, your head back.

"Who were you talking to, anyways?" Lincecum asks. You shrug.

"Couple old teammates. Tim Hudson, actually."

"Shit, did he tell you how he intends to pitch us?" Sanchez asks. "Because that would be helpful."

"No such luck, man."

"Lame."

Lincecum leans close, smiling up at you like a kid hoping for an autograph. "You told him we were gonna kick their asses, right?"

"Naturally."

Out of the crowd rises an impromptu group rendition of 'We Are the Champions,' spearheaded by Brian Wilson with Javier Lopez on high harmony. Sanchez turns towards them, calling joyful encouragement.

Because Lincecum is there, because Freddy has become distracted, because you are sick of all these other people, you put your mouth near his ear and say low, "You wanna get out of here?"

He pulls back a little, blinking. "Um, no? This shit's just getting started."

You shift your weight. "Kinda over it already."

"Yeah, well. It's the first time for some of us."

You bite your tongue, and fake a smile, a careless shrug. Lincecum is giving you a vaguely suspicious look, like you're keeping something from him but you're not; you'll tell him whatever he wants to know. He just never asks the right questions.

"That's cool," you say, even though it's not really. You would really like to leave, and apparently you'd really like to take him with you, because there's the door and here you are on the other side of the room.

"Have another beer," Tim instructs. "Beer fixes everything."

"Good advice, Drunky McCirrhosis."

Lincecum laughs, and bumps you with his shoulder. "Clever as fuck, you should write a book or some shit."

You make another not-quite-real smile. You want to put your arm around his shoulders again but that might be weird and obvious. You try to be aware of that stuff, because somebody has to be. You're anxious, jittery, feeling like every reporter in the building is out for your blood. You're maybe exaggerating things a little bit.

Your phone buzzes in your back pocket. You fish it out, and blink at the lit-up screen.

It's Mark fucking Mulder, which does rather go with the theme of the night but still comes as an absolute shock. You haven't talked to that guy in four years.

"Outta the fuckin' woodwork," you mutter.

Lincecum tips towards you, angling to see. "What? Who'sat?"

"Nobody. Mind your own business." You palm his face, pushing him away but not with any kind of malice, same way you'd push down a puppy that keeps jumping up.

You consider answering but then you think it might turn into a ridiculous farce, and as you're staring at your phone debating, the call ends. Half a minute later, the phone buzzes again with a new voicemail, which surprises you somewhat--you would have bet on Mulder just hanging up when he couldn't get through.

Lincecum has joined half a dozen other guys in pouring the better part of a twelve-rack over Bruce Bochy's head. They're shouting and jumping, bouncing off each other like slam dancing, and Boch has his hands over his head, laughing hugely with foam iced in his scruffy gray beard. The whole scene is being filmed from three separate angles.

You slip off to the quieter side of the room. The floor is beginning to reel, as slick and unstable as a riverbed. Your impressions are half reality and half drunken nonsense. Just a moment ago, a consequence of that last beer, you passed the point where you can rightly tell the difference.

Phone to your ear, turned away from the celebration, you listen to Mulder saying:

"Hey man, um, congratulations and shit. I, I saw you on television a little while ago with your boys, that was crazy and, and um. Fuckin' memories, yeah? Yeah. So, uh, have a good night, and good luck, like, really good luck, Barry. Um. Yeah."

It ends there, the disappearing sound of a snapped connection. You are amazed. Mulder has not appreciably changed in these four years, no more than he did in the decade that preceded them. Your first memory of him is at a bonfire in Cape Cod, when you were both nineteen and playing for the summer league, and he had stammered and ummed his way through a story that probably wouldn't have made any sense anyway. Talking has never been Mulder's strong suit. Everything else the man has ever tried, on the other hand--you'd rather not get into it.

The sadomasochistic side of you wants to call him back. The awkwardness would be incalculable, you don't doubt that. It's always been a big part of Mulder's appeal: you disconcert him to an amazing degree. You suspect that you may be the first genuine homosexual he's ever met, or anyway, the first who doesn't give a shit if his friends know about it. You remember Mulder watching you pick up a guy in a club with a blatantly gobsmacked look on his face, his beer arrested halfway to his mouth. You remember running into him in the hallway of the house he used to share with Eric Chavez, some three in the morning when you looked exactly like you just got fucked and he couldn't get a sentence out, marble-mouthed and training his eyes two feet over your shoulder because you weren't wearing a shirt and there were possibly visible bite marks.

Chavvy told you to give him a break, just tone it the hell down sometimes, but fuck that. You had to deal with Mulder's bar skanks sharing the same breakfast table in the morning, and his terrible awful horrifying taste in music, and his boring-ass stories that never go anywhere, so he could deal with you having a lot of sex with his roommate.

It was good for Mulder, really. Helped him grow as a person and shit. After awhile he stopped being so weirded out by you being gay, and commenced being weirded out by you being you, which was an encouraging step forward.

Then it went to hell with Chavez and, well. It's always been plain that Mulder's loyalties lie with anybody but you.

You haven't spoken to him since the A's went to the ALCS in 2006, and he hasn't pitched in a major league baseball game in years and years (be honest: it's only been two, but time moves differently at this level). You call him back, feeling driven and itchy and maybe a little bit self-destructive again; it comes back at the worst possible times.

It rings almost all the way to the message, and you're planning out what you'll say like a battle map, and then Mulder answers, shock of shocks.

"Barry, how, how the fuck you doin'?"

"How the fuck do you think?" you answer, aware that you're grinning hugely but not entirely sure why.

"Yeah, hell of a game, man, shit was ridiculous. And, uh, congratulations, that, that, that's really fuckin' cool."

Mulder sounds off-kilter, out of tune if he were music, but you figure that's probably only the distance.

"Thanks, dude."

A pause, and then you both speak at the same time--"What-" "Who-"--and you both stop, clear your throats.

"Uh, go ahead," Mulder says.

You shake your head. You can hardly remember what you meant to say and you realize belatedly that you're pretty drunk now.

"Just--how's life?" you settle on.

Mulder makes a short cut-off sound. "Fine, it's fine. I, um, I've been winning some golf tournaments and shit, don't know if you heard."

The phone tree connecting the former members of the Oakland Athletics is more like a stump that has Dutch Elm Disease. You've never been very good at keeping up with people you don't see every day. They've become Facebook friends instead of real ones. You only ever talk to them when something happens like your team winning the National League West.

"That's cool, man. God forbid you ever get a real job, right?"

"I'll get one when you do," Mulder says, and you smirk. You and Mulder have always gotten along best when trading toothless barbs.

"Gotta keep my current job first," you tell him. Mulder hesitates, breathes.

"Are you, um. Are they saying you might not--might not pitch in the playoffs?"

"That is indeed what they're saying," and you are still grinning, more like a hysterical grimace now and God only knows why.

Mulder hums briefly. "But that's--aren't you the only pitcher who's been there before?"

"That's true."

"So you should, um--they should let you pitch."

He's uncomfortable, but that's only to be expected. You rub your face, watching the celebration like someone not welcome to join, although that's not true--no matter how poorly you've pitched these past three years, you know that people here at least like you. You're not sure _why_ , but anyway.

"Preaching to the choir, Mark."

"That, um. Sucks, man. Uh. You're there, though. At least you still made it there."

"Yeah." You let a moment of silence pass in memory of Mark Mulder's left arm. "And, um. Thanks for calling."

"Oh. I, I, I was talking to Huddy a second ago. So it seemed, you know. Relevant."

"Sure. The real question, of course, is who you'll be pulling for in the division series."

Mulder laughs his brief nasally laugh, and you miss him very much all of a sudden, as much as Huddy or Richie or any of the other guys, which is strange because Mulder was never once your favorite in the moment.

"I'm flipping a coin, man. Unless you want to toss a couple million dollars my way to tip things in your favor."

You roll your eyes. The cracks about you being freakishly overpaid got old awhile ago.

"Are you gonna make it to any of the games?" you ask.

"Uh, that, that's doubtful. Our boy's still real little, you know."

You don't know, as a matter of fact. You find the idea of Mulder as a dad to be really bizarre for reasons you can't explain. Probably it's just that he's such a frat boy in your mind, frozen in his twenty-four year old incarnation.

There is another lapse. You listen to him breathing and when you picture him in your head, he looks like when he got that bad sunburn after falling asleep on the back patio, his skin tight and red and that quick hiss every time someone slapped him on the back, and you think about how he peeled all over for almost a week, little bits of skin everywhere.

"So, anyway," Mulder says. "Good luck and all."

"Yeah thanks. Good luck with the golf thing."

"Don't need it, but thanks," he replies cockily, and you bite your lip to keep from laughing out loud. Mark Mulder lived twenty-eight charmed years on this planet, and then the long decline, the slowest way down, pitch by pitch, tendon by tendon, cut by cut. It seems to you that the thing he lost, the thing he needs the most, is luck.

"Can I call you Johnny Golf now?" you ask.

"Dude, please don't."

"Whatever, I'm gonna."

"Whatever, weirdo. Go, go, go drink a beer for me. Tear it up some," and he's smiling, you can hear him smiling.

You say goodbye and end the call and that wasn't half as bad as you feared. You might actually feel a little bit better. Mark Mulder for the win, and it's the oddest thing that has happened to you tonight.

Timmy finds you again. He comes out of the woodwork too, out of the faceless crowd to attach himself to you, mad spinning eyes and hair plastered to his neck. One hand twists in your shirt at the hip.

"Dude, what are you _doing,_ " Lincecums demands of you, nothing like a question in it. "Get into the fuckin' party, seriously."

"I'm in it," you protest, enfeebled by the dig of his knuckles into the hard bone of your hip.

"Bullshit you are. Fuckin' wallflower on the phone all the time, like, what division title? I don't care, I'm Barry and this shit happens to me all the time."

He's just screwing around, never means any harm, but you are stung. You sock him on the arm, and he yelps, lets you go.

"You're drunk."

"So what! Everybody is drunk here, that is the _point_." Lincecum smiles and shows his charming face. You resolve to be unswayed.

"World Series is the point, I thought."

His eyes go wide. "Dude! You're not supposed to say it!"

"Get out of here with that superstitious shit," you tell him, only being contrary.

"What, you were the one who taught me most of it, you crazy bastard. And how drunk are _you_ , darling?"

You stare at him for a moment. "Not drunk enough to call you darling, that's for goddamn sure."

Tim laughs his goofy stoner laugh and hollers to the room at large, "More beer over here!"

You laugh too, and Lincecum lights up because getting you to laugh out loud is his favorite thing short of strikeouts. His hand is back wrapped in your shirt; you didn't even notice this time.

Cody Ross appears with two cracked beers like some kind of magic party gnome, blue eyes electric-gleaming, and then immediately vanishes back into the crowd. You and Tim bang your cans together, foam over your fingers and half the beer gone in the first pull. You see no reason to slow down now.

"You're done being on the phone, right?" Lincecum asks with an encouraging lean into your side, like if you say yes he might just go down on you again.

"For the moment," you answer.

"No, you're supposed to say, yeah, totally done, let's rock."

"And yet here we are." You push his head away. One of the trainers is nearby, damp khaki pants and orange shirt, using a smartphone to film the crowd, and the last thing you need is that soppy look on Lincecum's face showing up on YouTube.

"How did you get to be so lame, really? And are you gonna be like this for the rest of the night?"

"Yeah probably," you reply just to see his face scrunch up in drunken dismay. "We can leave whenever you want."

"I don't want, I never want!" and Tim is shouting, getting out of hand. "You're coming with me, motherfucker, coming right now."

He drags you into the crowd, into the mess of teammates that you have been observing like an exotic tribe from the side of the room. Chimeric rituals and traditions, guys whooping and singing and pounding each other on the back, telling fanciful mistruths to the press. They've given up pouring beer over each other's heads in favor of drinking it, and now everyone looks blurry, diluted and youngish.

A number of minutes passes you by in the shuffle. Tim is stuck to your side, an engine running hot under his clothes and skin, beaming at you in close proximity. He's a shield, a buffer against the rest of the world. You are worried in a distant way about what will become of you in the unspecified future, if you should lose him as you have lost your other team, and then you drink another beer and you aren't worried about anything anymore.

The celebration goes on like that for awhile, and you suffer it with a stupid grin on your face, too aware of cameras and microphones. You avoid reporters as if they're contagious.

And then, at long freakin' last, things begin to die down. The media is first to go, and then the ballpark employees and front office brass and other non-essential personnel trickle out of the clubhouse, and the knots of ballplayers get smaller and tighter. Brian Wilson reoccurs with his stark black shoe-polish beard making him look like a cartoon criminal, trumpeting and catcalling and ordering everybody and their mom to come over to his place and get righteously fucked up.

Lincecum wants to go, he tugs at your shirt and says, "Yeah, hell yeah, we are so there," but you shoot that idea down on spec. You pull Tim away and put your mouth next to his ear, telling him about the filthy things you want to do to him as his eyes get very big and dark, eager as hell. He grins, "Actually, okay, let's do that," and then finally, _finally_ , you get to change out of your ruined uniform and put on regular shoes again.

Nobody is sober enough to drive, and outside the ballpark awaits a line of taxis that someone had the foresight to call. You and Lincecum climb into the same cab, and he shouts goodnight out the rolled-down window to the other guys, goodbye and good luck and see you tomorrow and all the rest of it.

You give the cabbie your address. Lincecum jams right up next to you, his poky shoulder tucked into your arm.

"This is great, so fuckin' great, seriously," and Lincecum kisses you open-mouthed on the edge of your jaw, quick hot swipe.

You elbow him away, hissing, "Dude, discretion."

"Fuck discretion!" Lincecum pushes close again, a grinning imbecile wholeheartedly convinced of his own indefatigable charm. "I'm about to yell it from fuckin' rooftops. You and me, and this fuckin' team, look, look what we did!"

You shoot a glance at the driver but he doesn't care about you or this idiot teammate who is probably in love with you. The driver is on his dispatch walkie-talkie, speaking a language you can't identify.

"Just try to maintain, will you. We're almost home," you say.

Lincecum takes your arm and hooks it around his shoulders, both hands pressed prayerfully around one of yours. Still big-grinning, crooked teeth and creases and squished eyes in the tempered early-evening light. He smells like beer; everything smells like beer. You sigh and relax against the seat, Tim set into the curve of your body like the two of you were originally carved from a single piece.

San Francisco rolls by outside the windows. You see Lincecum's face ten feet tall on the side of a bus. You see your own hanging from a lamppost. The melancholic sense that so infected you at the ballpark has not abated. You still don't feel that the day's successes have anything to do with you.

In the elevator of your building, Lincecum pulls you down by your shirt collar and kisses you on the mouth. You sorta collapse against the wall, your knees bending to accommodate him.

"Amazing," Lincecum says in a mumble against your lips. That's what he always says, so you don't know what he's talking about, and you don't really want to hear it anyway, and so you kiss him again, a drugging kiss that makes you muffled and slow and heavy-handed.

And then your phone rings. You break away from Lincecum, half-laughing at the ridiculous timing of it, closing your hands around his arms.

"Leave it, just leave it," Lincecum says, and pops open the button on your jeans. Your breath catches tight in your throat, and the elevator dings, doors sliding open at your floor, and it's too much all of a sudden, lights everywhere and a door slamming down the hall. It's barely seven o'clock and you have neighbors, for God's sake, all of whom know your face. Habitual panic slicks momentarily past your defenses.

You get away from Lincecum and pull your phone out of your pocket. With a feeling like the first layer of your heart sheared away, you look down to see Eric Chavez's name glowing brightly in your hand.

It goes quiet, just for a moment. Your mind shows you no memories, nothing to distract you. Chavvy is calling you. He's right there on the other end of the line.

"I have to take this," you say.

"The hell you do. We got plans, fuckin' urgent fuckin' plans," and Lincecum is herding you down to the hallway, pawing at your jeans in an attempt to steal your keys and get into your apartment. He leans up and mouths at your neck, and you have to push him away again, your pulse going like gangbusters and your phone vibrating insistently.

"Here, just, just wait for me for a second, it'll only be a second." You toss him the keys and he gives you a dramatically crushed look but you know that's only a put-on. "Go in, I'll be right there."

Lincecum huffs an exasperated noise, but does as you say. You answer before the door snicks closed, adrenaline as hard as pennies in your mouth.

"Chavvy?"

"Barry Zito, as I live and breathe."

Your knees go shuddery, and you slump against the wall. You haven't spoken to him since that night with Rich Harden in Hayward, and even that was only Harden trying to make things uncomfortable and hence more interesting. Before then, it had been close to a year.

(It's been ten years. The longest decade of your life, the longest you will ever live and you are convinced of that.

Eric Chavez was the point of it all, those first few seasons of your major league career, the unexpected one because you were better friends with Huddy and Mulder was more your type physically, and you always had a tendency to fall for the guys least likely to actually take you up on it (ballplayers, man). The story might read differently, some wretched angsty unrequited thing, but instead it was Chavvy.

Over the course of your life you've had dozens of friends almost exactly like him, SoCal born and bred, baseball-devoted, big fan of Sublime and the Chilis, cool and funny in an awkward kind of way. A completely regular guy, erring on the side of righteousness but you assumed that was humanity's default state at that point (you were still young). The weird thing about Chavez has always been that you can't for the life of you pinpoint what makes him so special.

But so it went, anyway. You remember afternoons dozing in and out of football games, Chavez slumped against you and that sticky stuff he uses in his hair getting on your face. You remember kissing him on the living room floor in a mess of videgame cables and empty beer bottles. Kicking his foot under the table when you were out to dinner with the guys so that he would look up and flash you a smile. Recognizing that it was him hugging you from behind in a walk-off melee, the particular solidity of his chest against your back. Making him laugh so hard he had to put his head down on the bar. Talking for five hours straight on a cross-country flight, a floating gold light about the two of you in the last row of the plane.

It lasted twenty-seven months, and that was the longest you'd ever been with anybody.

Of course it wasn't really like that. You weren't dating so much as convenient. You certainly weren't exclusive. But he was around everywhere you went for a while there, every place you woke up for months at a time. Hotel rooms and rented houses, in your childhood bed when you were both home for Christmas, in the backseat of a dozen different cars--temporary places, individual moments when you were entirely happy and it didn't seem like anything at the time, just the status quo. You were good and your team was good and you had Chavez, and so happiness was a given. It was how the world was supposed to be. You didn't realize what was happening to you until it was too late.

Chavvy stuck with you until it got serious with one of the girls he was screwing around with, and then he drove you home from the ballpark and told you in the underground parking garage of your building, "Listen man, I think I'm gonna give this thing with Alex a real shot," and that was not what you expected him to say.

"Why?" was what came out of your mouth, and he looked surprised, half a hesitant smile.

"'cause she's fuckin' cool, man. Could even go the distance, I dunno."

"But-" and then you stopped. You had been about to say something really stupid.

Chavez touched the side of your neck quickly; that was his thing that he always did, swift brushing fingers on the side of your neck. "No big deal, right? Still friends and all."

And you said, "Yeah of course," and for a second you believed it too. He smiled for real and you felt okay because Chavvy was smiling and so it couldn't be too bad.

You remember standing and staring at the gray concrete after Chavez drove away, red taillights under fluorescent, and then riding up alone in the elevator, the illuminated button for the fourth floor cracked right down the middle and you too, though it would take you months and years to fully understand it--you were broken precisely in half.

So yeah, you were pretty fucking gone on him once upon a time.)

"How are you, man?" you ask him in the here and now.

"Green with envy, what do you think? Congratulations, that's awesome."

"Yeah, thanks. I, um, thank you." You're terrible on the phone, always have been.

"Really good game too," Chavez tells you, and you have to strain to remember--the game itself seems like it happened years ago.

"The boys showed up, they just, you know, it's never easy. God fuckin' forbid it ever be easy. They call it torture over here."

"I heard about that. Fun way to spend your summer, huh?"

"Yeah, our division champs gear came with ulcer medication."

You ripped that line off of Brian Wilson, but nobody has to know. Chavez sorta laughs and turns it into clearing his throat, and then it gets quiet. You push your knuckles into your eye. The thing you hate most in the world is awkward silence, empty air.

"So, so," you say. "How's the fam?"

Another pause, and you are actively holding your breath.

"They're great, it's--it's really great. I mean, it's crazy. Mortgages and kindergarten and car pools and everything. Very grown-up, living the dream and all."

"Say it ain't so," and you're at least sixty percent joking.

"It's cool. It's good." Chavez sounds weirdly uncertain but you're probably just reading into things. He's probably just uncomfortable because he obviously can't ask about your pretty blonde wife and 2.5 kids. "Are you guys going out tonight, or what?"

"Uh, yeah, some of them were. We just came back, though. Long day, like, long month too."

"And it's only just begun. Only gets better from here, if I remember right." Chavez's breath hitches, and then he asks, "Who'm I keeping you from, dude?"

It's casual, light enough, pitched at just the right tone for a former hook-up asking about a current one. It's taken as a point of fact that you've both moved on. Regardless, you flush, the skin on your arms prickling.

"Just one of the guys," you say.

"Yeah, I got a guess or two," Chavez says, teasing and without malice. "Like 'em kinda scrawny, don't you?"

You choke on a laugh, leaning your shoulder against the wall and covering your eyes with your hand. You have this image of Eric Chavez sitting on the floor with his kids climbing over him and napping in his lap, watching the Giants game and smirking at you and Lincecum leaning on the rail together, sitting too close on the bench, bubble-blowing contests and sunflower-seed target practice. You have no doubt that the whole thing is incredibly obvious to someone who knows what they're looking for.

"Ah well you know," you say on one breath. "Always did have a soft spot for a good change-up."

"Blind spot, I think you mean to say."

"Thanks, Chav, always so helpful."

He huffs, but it's his good-tempered huff, amused and willing to tolerate a lot of nonsense from you. "You know you miss me, punk."

You nod. Of course you miss him. "Yeah."

Another pause, and some small piece of the awkwardness has chipped off.

"So, um," Chavez says eventually. "Good luck, I wanted to say good luck."

You almost say 'you too,' but that's just instinct, doesn't make any sense. The A's (still the only team Chavez will ever play for) have spent most of the year ten games back and jockeying for second place with Anaheim; Oakland ended the season at 81-81, a perfect .500.

"Thanks man."

"I mean, like. I talked to Huddy and I wished him good luck too, but that was mostly only 'cause I like him. I think I'm actually pulling for you guys."

You smile. "Everybody with a brain ought to be. We're clearly the good guys in this movie."

"Yeah, until somebody beats the Yankees," Chavez says back.

"We're gonna beat the Yankees," you say, and it feels like taking a punch in the chest, sudden insane certainty blooming in your heart. "We're gonna fucking destroy them, man."

It's the wildest feeling you've ever had, and you've had it before--faith, faith in its purest form. You believe it, you _know_ it, like you know there is a God, like you know your mother loved you, every one of your deepest truths. This team, this year. This time you're not going to have to go home.

Chavez laughs some more, and says, "Well, godspeed from all of us, then."

"Chavvy," and you are laughing somewhat yourself, a breathy mildly hysterical type of thing. You're reeling. "I think, I mean I really think we might get it done, like, all the way."

"Yeah, I've heard that before," Chavez says, but he's not bitter or anything, kinda soft and tolerant because of course he remembers what it was like. "One thing at a time, remember?"

You nod, feeling stupid and giddy and desperate. The other five times you've been to the playoffs, Eric Chavez has been right beside you in one way or another, telling you probably a hundred times, _one thing a time_. Eleven more games to win and each of them looms like an alien planet that needs to be conquered. Don't get ahead of yourself. There is superstition involved, and unwritten rules: nobody even says the words 'World Series' until the pennant is concretely in hand, champagne raining down.

"Don't think about it so much," Chavez continues, talking you through it like when you were a rookie and had personally traded baseball cards of half the Yankee lineup that you were going to face the next day. "You just throw where he puts the glove, right?"

You swallow hard. You consider telling him that you might not get to throw at all, but you bite it back. Getting left off the playoff roster is the darkest of predictions. It would totally ruin the good feeling of the call.

"Yeah, I try," you say instead. "Listen, I, I should probably get back," because it is doing weird things to you, Chavvy's voice in your ear and this old kind of joy rattling around your bones. It's confusing.

"Oh yeah, go and have your going-to-the-postseason sex. It's pretty awesome, if I'm remembering right."

You snort and roll your eyes, blushing a little because of course he's right. "Get outta here."

" _You_ get outta here, get gone, fuckin' champion of the world and all, like anybody wants to see that."

Big grin from you, all at once and unexpected, your face feeling stretched. The bland snakeish pattern of the wallpaper in the hallway blurs in front of you, and you swipe a hand across your eyes, tell him as honest as anything:

"Wish you were here, man."

He makes a sound you can't identify, can't interpret, and says, "Me too," and then, "Call me sometime, huh? Not just 'cause you win the pennant or whatever."

"I will, Chavvy," and you will not. You know it, you figure he probably does too. You figure everyone at least knows what's going on here.

"Bye man, and good luck, lots more good luck."

You are drowning in it already. Luck runs under everything in this game, right alongside hope and devotion, agony and joy. It's never mattered how much you want it, how hard you've tried. It comes down to whose prayers get answered, and you press one hand flat over your chest, trapping your heart inside.

Even though it still doesn't make any sense you tell him, "You too." You don't say goodbye; you like to leave things open-ended.

It takes you a moment there in the hallway, empty-voiced phone held to your ear. You are aware of your shaking hands, the way your head feels softened, your mind kinda squashed down and barely functioning. You think of a couple things you might have told Chavez, and then you push that stuff aside, pocket your phone and stumble into your apartment.

Lincecum is waiting in the bedroom, and he sits up as you come in, teetering and toeing your shoes off. He's not wearing a shirt, maybe nothing at all under the covers, and in the slanted bedside light he looks very young and very happy, very much out of your league but here you are. You pull your shirt over your head and he grins brilliantly.

"Fuckin' took your time about it, come on."

So impatient, he's on his knees and reaching out for you. Lincecum is wearing his boxers and nothing else, his hands working fast over the buckle of your belt, snicking give of the zipper. You run your hand up his side, smooth warm path of skin and Tim squirming because he's kinda ticklish there.

"I'm gonna steal your phone," Lincecum says, chewing the words into your collarbone. "Throw it off a cliff an' into the ocean."

You take his head in your hands, pull his face up and kiss him for a long time. Eyes closed, fingers in his hair, thumbs on his cheekbones, the bare shivering length of him pressed against you. You're still looking for something. You kiss him until it physically hurts.

Lincecum pulls away gasping, panting. He drags you down onto the bed with him, kicking the blankets off because they only get in the way, rolling you over and wrapping himself around you, legs and arms and everything, hotter than hell. He's still got that nutso grin on his face, his eyes burning and overjoyed. He pushes his fingers across your mouth, and he's staring.

"Fuck man," Tim whispers, awed. "This thing could go the distance, you know that?"

Impossible to describe what it does to you, hearing Tim Lincecum put it in those particular terms. You bury your face in his throat, one hand palming his legs open. There is a breaking feeling in your chest, but maybe it's not all bad, something like tree roots busting up the sidewalk, like a bat shattered on a two-run double in the late innings. Like maybe it's actually worth it.

Your eyes are screwed shut, fighting the good ending because it feels an awful lot like false hope, but fuck it, you've earned some of that. You believe, you believe with your body and soul and heart and life, with everything you are and everything you have. Wherever this team goes, you're going with them.

Tim tugs you up by your hair and kisses you again, and in a fit of baseless romanticism you think that this moment is unlike any that you have ever known.

THE END


End file.
